1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a system and method for telecommunication system trace diagnostics and, more particularly, to a system and method that displays telecommunication system tracer information from any number of a plurality of tracer telecommunications protocols in a manner to facilitate telecommunication system diagnostics by a user. Telecommunications systems, as used herein, refers to any computer and/or telephone system, in a stand-alone or networked configuration, that is used to electronically communicate information.
2. Background Description
The swift advance of telecommunications technology over the latter half of the twentieth century promises a future in which a broad suite of services is available to the network user. These services cover a wide spectrum of activities encompassing traditional telephony and computer data transmission as well as the integration of these activities. The future user of telecommunications technology can expect digital telephony, high-speed data transmission, real-time video, high fidelity audio, and the combination of these activities into multimedia products all to be readily available over a network that interconnects users throughout the world.
In the first half of the twentieth century, telephony architecture developed along the lines of a circuit-switched network providing audio communication to potentially every person in the world. Then, Private Branch Exchanges (PBXs) that provide a local telephone network within a building but that also retain access to the larger global network were developed. PBXs represent an example of a network within a network.
With the advent of the personal computer in the 1970s, early computer network architectures were developed that led to the internetworking of computers in a manner analogous to the internetworking of telephones. Motivated by the desire to distribute resources among user""s who may communicate with each other, Local Area Networks (LANs) were developed that allowed a local interconnection of computers. They may be thought of as being analogous to the PBXs. The recognition that users within one LAN may wish to communicate with users in a separate LAN led to the development of Wide Area Networks (WANs), which may be thought of as a network of networks. Such networking of personal computers has led to new user services such as electronic mail and electronic file sharing.
Because modern telecommunications equipment, including everything from routers and switches to telephones and personal computers, comprises a wide range of purposes, the telecommunications and computer industries have formulated the Open Systems Interface (OSI) model to provide a basis for developing and coordinating standards for internetworking systems developed by a variety of vendors/users. This approach models the telecommunications process as a structure of seven layers. These layers address, in turn, the physical connection, the data link, network functions, transport and data flow, session management, presentation, and finally the application, as basic features of an end-to-end communication process. The basis for the workability of a telecommunications network is the set of rules for communicating known as the protocol. Various protocols exist for each layer of the OSI model. These protocols are required to connect different physical devices, for example, telephones and personal computers to multiple pipelines such as copper wire and fiber optics. These pipelines use a variety of switching approaches, for example, circuit switching and packet switching, each of which has different performance criteria in a wide variety of end-user applications, such as low latency for telephone systems and low error rate for data exchange systems.
In addition to the user-based network functions (e.g., transmission of voice or data), each network requires a system for controlling the network in a fashion transparent to the user. When a person picks up the telephone to place a call, for example, a signal is sent to a central office (CO) switch to alert it that a user wishes to make a call. A response is sent back to the user in the form of a dial tone to indicate that the required network resources are available. This communication, which is essentially invisible to the caller, is an example of the kind of control functions that are necessarily implemented in the operation of any network. For the telephone network, the control system is known as Signaling System Number 7 (SS7). As implemented, SS7 comprises a suite of protocols, each of which serves a specific function in controlling the network. For example, the protocol named the Message Transfer Part (MTP) insures that traffic flows through the network by redirecting traffic around failed or overloaded nodes. Another SS7 protocol is the Transaction Capabilities Part (TCAP), which is used in querying any databases that are utilized in controlling the network. Because of its nature as a control system, SS7 is not necessarily limited to use in telephone networks. SS7 and the techniques associated with it are proving useful in more general, computer-based telecommunications networks. Thus, it is clear that network control is an important and potentially complex aspect of telecommunications networking operations.
A critical function in the control of any network, be it a LAN, a PBX, or the Internet, is the management of network resources in order to diagnose and troubleshoot problems, to monitor system performance and to assess traffic patterns and loads. One of the tools commonly available to assist the network engineer in fulfilling a part of this management function is a software application generically known as a tracer. A tracer is a software program that outputs a record of network events (i.e., a trace) in order to aid the engineer in troubleshooting network operations. Due to the variety of technologies that contribute to a modern telecommunications network, a network engineer may be required to utilize a broad array of tracer programs in order to troubleshoot and diagnose problems that can occur in the various aspects of the network. A tracer used to query a telephone network necessarily obtains different information than a tracer used to query a LAN. Moreover, because a given type of network (e.g., LAN) may be manufactured by multiple vendors, each of whom may choose different protocols for use within the network, tracer programs must interact with a wide variety of telecommunications protocols. The network engineer must be conversant with the operation and utilization of many tracer programs interacting with a variety of protocols in order to implement the required network management functions.
Quite often, the output of these various tracer programs is provided in a non-readable binary or hexadecimal format and requires decoding to a human readable format, such as English. Co-pending patent applications Ser. No. 09/540,184 and Ser. No. 09/540,183 describe systems, methods and a catalog definition language (CDL) by which a plurality of tracers can be unified into a common tool-set to provide a coherent and consistent view of the decoding of tracer output from a plurality of tracers. These co-pending patent applications also describe the system and method by which a plurality of telecommunication protocols that are integrated within any tracer can be decoded to provide a contextual view of tracer events to facilitate the diagnostic process. Because of the generality and flexibility of the system and methods of the invention based on CDL, it becomes feasible to unify many tracers within a single tool while simultaneously decoding a plurality of telecommunication protocols. Since the invention can accommodate many tracers and telecommunication protocols, referred to as catalogs, the invention requires a common method of display that can accommodate a diversity of tracers and protocols while at the same time providing a display that can be easily used and understood.
The display is implemented using a graphical user interface, GUI. Graphical user interfaces are not new and they have been used in a multitude of software applications for many years. However, this claimed invention pertains specifically to its use in a format that meets the needs of co-pending patent applications Ser. No. 09/540,184 and Ser. No. 09/540,183.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a method for displaying CDL decoded telecommunication trace results in a consistent display format that is both easy to use and easy to understand.
According to the invention, the method of displaying CDL decoded trace results can be based on a window of three panes in which to display (1) a tree view of trace events, (2) a view of the decoded trace data, and (3) a view of the original trace. For each original trace request partial results are displayed in the tree view and the decoded trace data, with regular updating until complete results are provided. Also the display provides for a plurality of concurrently pending original trace requests. The view within all three panes can be synchronized based on the selection of an event from either the tree view pane or from the original trace. Further, any pane can be collapsed if required.
In this display method, a window is dedicated to each separate display, and all these displays are contained within a trace browser""s main window. The general principle of the design is that the application is essentially contained within a single view, and there is never a need to navigate through multiple views. This avoids the navigational risk of getting lost within a browser-based forward/backward paging structure of the application. The full functionality of the browser""s menus, toolbars and display results remains available to the user in a single view.
The invention provides a method for displaying telecommunication trace diagnostic information in a graphical user interface, the diagnostic information being based on a catalog definition language to effect decoding, comprising a number of steps. One step uses a commercially available Internet browser for connecting to a web site on a web server hosting an integrated trace analysis (iTAS) application, the iTAS application providing trace analysis services having an encoding and decoding sub-system using a catalog definition language (CDL). Another step selects the iTAS application from the web site. A further step requests one or more functions to be performed by the iTAS application service. An additional step, performed for each requested function, displays the result of the iTAS service requested in a browser based graphical user interface. In this method, for each requested function partial results are displayed with regular status updating until the complete results are provided, and the graphical user interface provides for a plurality of concurrently pending functions.